This item contains a two-page sample from the Kitty Genovese Women’s Project document, produced for International Women’s Day, March 8, 1977. The sample includes the opening page and page 2 of a larger 24-page document created by the Kitty Genovese Women’s Project, a radical feminist anti-rape project founded by Nikki Craft and others in Dallas. The full document is not yet reproduced here. Craft hopes someday to obtain funding to make high-quality copies or scans of the complete 24-page original.

Image 1: The first page is headed “KITTY GENOVESE WOMENS PROJECT” with the subtitle “INTERNATIONAL WOMENS DAY / MARCH 8, 1977.” The page includes multiple article blocks and visual elements: “WAS HE ASKING FOR IT?,” “RAPE,” a large central “$1,000 REWARD / FRIENDLY RAPIST” notice stamped diagonally in red, a photograph and biographical panel about Kitty Genovese, and a large “STATEMENT OF PURPOSE.” The statement explains the project’s decision to print names of men indicted for sex crimes against women, describes the project as a response to institutional failure, and invites women to distribute copies in public spaces including bookstores, laundromats, campuses, grocery stores, bulletin boards, filling stations, and public buildings.

Image 2: The second page is headed “RAPE VICTIMS SPEAK OUT!” and includes the article “BUT THERE’S SOME DOUBT ABOUT YOUR VIRGINITY….. NOW HAVE YOU BEEN MESSING AROUND?” This article is Nikki Craft’s account of being raped at knifepoint as a fifteen-year-old and then subjected to hostile questioning and disbelief by legal authorities. Craft identifies the man who raped her as a serial rapist and, in her later account, most likely a serial killer; he later killed a woman in Florida and died on death row. The page also includes sections titled “STATE OF SIEGE” and “STRONG, SELF-DETERMINED, …A WILL OF IRON,” describing rape trauma, women’s fear in public life, resistance, self-defense, and the political motivation behind the Kitty Genovese Women’s Project.

A part of the Nikki Craft Archival Project

Keywords: The Kitty Genovese Women’s Project was named in memory of Kitty Genovese, whose murder became a public symbol of bystander failure and social refusal to intervene in male violence against women. This two-page sample documents the project’s early radical feminist analysis of rape, institutional indifference, sex offender accountability, and women’s collective resistance. It also preserves a central autobiographical source for understanding how Craft’s own rape, the response of authorities, and her later anti-rape organizing became connected within her political work.

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